高盛拟370亿美元收购信贷公司Palmer Square

Elsewhere in the world, Goldman is revving up its deal making push. Sources telling Bloomberg the bank has emerged as the lead bidder to acquire Palmer Square, a credit manager that oversees $37,000,000,000. Bloomberg chief Wall Street correspondent, Sridhar Natarajan, joins us for more. So Palmer Square, I take it mostly does CLOs. Why would Goldman be interested in this? Well, you have to go back to last week when David Solomon was speaking at an industry conference, and he was explaining on states the rationale for the spree of deals that we have seen from Goldman Sachs over the last year.

And he was very clear. Wherever we have gaps, we want to close that gap. So if there are opportunities, they want to pounce on that. And that's been visible over the course of the last twelve months. In fact, one of the most interesting side stories out of Goldman Sachs in the last year for me. Yes. Everyone's been focused on the deal making pace and the trading activity, and, yes, they have been going gangbusters, but it has also given Goldman the cover to go out and look for deals, allowing it to bulk up its $4,000,000,000,000 asset manager.

Remember the story here. Goldman Sachs is the preeminent adviser on corporate takeovers, but it doesn't really historically, it doesn't do a good job in acquiring businesses. That's something that they've been trying to change. They're not going after massive deals. They're going after small deals that are very specific in certain niches that can fill some gaps. Goldman is not a big issuer of CLOs. That's why their interest in Palmer Square right now makes sense.

CLOs kinda raise a red flag when I start seeing people buying them. Was at the Fed during the crisis. This was kinda the core, but these aren't the same kinda things anymore. These are more about data centers. These are different. These aren't necessarily just consumer loans. Right? So is this, like, part of a broader push by Goldman or, you know, into a more diversified loan portfolio? Or, like, how do I wanna think about it?

Because it kinda does sound a little alarming at first. Think about it more in terms of a diversified business as an asset manager must have, not necessarily your view on the corporate loan market or the loans getting bundled into bonds and being turned into CLOs right now. Because if you think about that asset class, especially in The US, CLO the market for CLOs has more than quadrupled in the last fifteen years. We're now talking more than $1,300,000,000,000 of US CLOs outstanding.

So whether the whether the Fed is hiking rates or reducing rates, whether it is risk on or risk off, that doesn't that might have an impact today and tomorrow and the next week, but does not impact the sustainability and the durability of this asset class. So if this asset class is here to stay and you're one of the biggest alternative investment managers, which Goldman does believe it is, it is one of the top five, top six, but it doesn't have the same sort of CLO machine like some of the other bigger managers like Caroline and Blackstone and BlackRock and the others.

That's what Goldman is trying to solve for if they go ahead and pull the trigger on this deal. So I love, like, whenever I talk to the private credit people from Goldman Sachs, they're always like, we've been in private credit for so long. Like, we are a behemoth here. Don't discount us. But what do you make of the fact that along with there's so many of the deals, be it the ETF one they did or otherwise, are specifically around the asset management business?

I I mean, that that's the only place where they're looking. In in fact, you can make an argument. You don't really need to grow the banking side or the trading side. You're really top of class there anyway, so why would you want to grow that? This is the part of the business where they need to grow. They have had a very strong merchant banking franchise. Just on the traditional asset management side, not so much. That's why a couple of the deals we've seen gives them scale in the active ETF front, the Innovator Capital deal, the NEOS deal that they announced last month.

So those two deals actually immediately scales them up in active ETFs. If they go ahead with Palmer Square, that can give them optionality on CLOs. But what is clear is they're actively on the hunt. So if this deal comes through great, even if it doesn't come through, they will be looking for other opportunities because when Goldman Sachs CEO goes out there and says, will we be looking for more deals? Yes. Probably. You should take that as a very strong signal because he's very deliberate about the kinds of words he chooses, and that's the signal he's giving the market right now.